Want to Shame a Terrible Parker? There's an App for That

In Russia, an app identifies "parking douches."

No one likes crummy parking jobs. But drivers take it to another level in Russia.

According to this video from online newspaper The Village, cars in Russia tend to anchor their wheels wherever they please – from sidewalks to front yards to crosswalks. To combat this, The Village has launched an apparently real phone app called Parking Douche to publicly identify and ostracize impolite parkers.

The app's explanatory video says that the Parking Douche app enables pedestrians to take pictures of poorly parked cars, along with their license plate numbers. "The data are streamed live to meta-ads that are targeted through an IP address, so people who live or work close to the locations these cars were parked see it," the video explains. It apparently creates pop-up ads that appear on neighbors' computers "interrupting you while you're trying to read an online article" displayed on The Village and its partner sites.

Though Parking Douche seems to be little more than a clever ad campaign, it's not a bad idea for a mobile application – minus the automatic pop-ups. It's a slightly more advanced version of the "You Park Like an Asshole" project.

While calling people names might not be the most constructive way to start a dialogue with bad parkers, maybe it will inspire a more civilized parking culture in cities. At the very least, perhaps drivers will be shamed into better parking.